Hot beverages and the like are constantly being served in environments in which an accidental spill can result in a painful injury, property damage, and other undesirable results.
For example, on airlines, trains and the like, it is customary to serve both hot and cold beverages to passengers. Quite often, these beverages are served in disposable paper or plastic drinking cups or containers which may or may not be provided with lids to retain the heat in the hot drinks or provide a straw slot for the cold drinks.
It has been often attempted in the prior art to provide a satisfactory tear-away segment or portion of a snap on thermoformed plastic lid such that a person can leave the lid on the beverage container and drink through the torn away segmental portion. This would give ready access to the contents of the container while substantially reducing the chance of spillage or splash by virtue of leaving the majority of the lid in place on the container while drinking.
Such prior art attempts to fabricate tear-away thermo-formed plastic lids required, for the most part, that the center of the lid, the bead cavity engaging the cup, includng the vertical wall of the bead cavity and outward to the rim of the lid, be cut or scored in order to provide a tear-away section of that lid.
This general form of construction gives rise to several standing problems in the art: first, it is very difficult to consistently and successfully place a cut in the vertical or substantially vertical walls of a bead cavity and provide a good consistent tearing of the vertical wall in the removal of the segment of the lid; second, it is difficult to score the vertical wall of the lid in high speed production such as thermo-forming and third, the prior art lids are designed to be torn from the outside in, ie.g., from the rim of the bead cavity toward the center of the lid, and with this type of tearing motion one cannot achieve a consistently uniform tear, thereby rendering an undesirable cosmetic affect to this type lid for consumer use.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and novel thermo-formed lid of plastic or plastic foam sheet material having a tear-away segment defined therein which will consistently tear off the led and leave a predictable portion of the lid on the container.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a new and novel thermo-formed sheet plastic or foam sheet plastic lid which is readily adaptable to high speed thermo-formed production methods and which will result in a consistent and uniform end product.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a new and novel plastic or foam sheet plastic thermo-formed lid for disposable beverage containers and the like having a removable tear-away segment which is removable by tearing with an inside to outside motion.
These an other objects of the present invention will become more fully apparent with reference to the following specification and drawings which relate to a preferred embodiment of the invention.